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The three important matters in the Lord’s recovery today are begetting, nourishing, and teaching. There is also an urgent need for us to practice three things: everyone speaking, no one being the head, and having a meeting in every home. Some people might say that everyone speaks, and under normal circumstances everyone can speak; however, in the meetings very few people speak. Therefore, we must stand against this situation and encourage everyone to speak in the meetings.
In the natural man everyone likes to be the head. This can be seen even among children; the oldest child in a family always wants to be the head. However, in our service to the Lord, we must stand against the natural man. No one should be the head. There is only one person who is the Head; we have only one Head. The Chinese character for big or great is composed of one and man. Only one man, the Lord Jesus, is great. Apart from Him, no one is great.
We also need meetings in every home. Human beings are social; we like to contact one another. I like to go to your home, and you like to come to my home. However, when it is related to the Lord, very few people want to open their homes and invite people. The three poisons of no one speaking, everyone being the head, and homes without meetings are in us from degraded Christianity.
God wants all His people to be prophets (Num. 11:29). The apostle Paul says that we can all prophesy one by one (1 Cor. 14:31). This is the desire of God’s heart. In Matthew 20 the Lord Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be first among you shall be your slave” (v. 27). Acts shows that the early believers opened their homes and met from house to house immediately after they were saved (2:46).
In Taipei there are presently three to four thousand saints who meet regularly and participate in the activities of the church. According to our estimate, there are about one thousand households. What would the situation be if these four thousand saints spoke concerning God, the Lord Jesus, and the divine life every day? What would the situation be if they spoke the gospel and the truth every day? If they opened their homes and had a meeting one evening a week for one year, our numbers would double; we would increase from four thousand people to eight thousand people and from one thousand households to two thousand households. In the second year we could increase to twelve thousand people. Those who are saved in the homes will be remaining fruit. Furthermore, they will do the same things that we do because children usually imitate their parents. If we all speak, no one can be the head, and we will open our homes. Then the ones we lead to salvation will be the same as we. In two years there could be twelve thousand people who practice these three things. This would be glorious.
Those in Christianity are dead, and even we are dead, because no one speaks in the meetings, everyone wants to be the head, and no one opens his home for meetings. May the Lord show us that we must overturn the habits of not speaking and not opening our homes, and we must hate being the head. If we are such people, those whom we lead to salvation will also be like this. They will open their homes, speak in the meetings, and not want to be the head. By diligently practicing these three things, we will bring in a revival to the island of Taiwan. This is the way to gospelize Taiwan.
Some young brothers and sisters are already going out to the new communities to preach the gospel from door to door, and the results have been very good. Almost every door they knocked on was open to them. People opened their doors to welcome them, and those who received them were blessed with the gospel. Many people invited them to return for a second visit. These homes are for preaching the gospel. This is marvelous. From the time we began preaching the gospel in mainland China, we have not encountered a situation like this. It is truly wonderful.
If we all speak for the Lord, no one can be the head to restrict, rule over, hinder, or control the other saints, and if we are freed from bondage to open our homes for meetings, our relatives, friends, and neighbors will be saved. Before we read the Bible with people or meet with them in our homes, we need to be prepared so that we can lead them to Christ. The Chinese people like to read Proverbs because it is full of wise sayings. Sixty years ago I also liked to read Proverbs, but the more I studied the Bible, the deeper I entered into God’s New Testament economy. It is easy for a new believer to appreciate Proverbs. Reading Proverbs can be compared to serving people appetizers to whet their appetite. Proverbs whets the appetite. For example, Proverbs 10:19 says, “When there are many words transgression does not cease, / But he who restrains his lips is prudent.” When a person hears these words, he will feel that the Bible is a superior book, regardless of his religious background.
There was a co-worker who was two years older than I. He contracted tuberculosis forty years ago at the same time that I did. Our sicknesses were approximately the same in severity, but he went to be with the Lord. I often remember him because we were very close and in one accord. He was from Manchuria, and before his salvation he was zealous for politics. He even contributed most of the wealth that he had inherited to political causes. He also despised Christianity because he thought it was a Western religion and a form of imperialism. He did not believe in anything and was not superstitious. One day he stopped by a small temple on a mountain. In the temple there was a large Bible on the offering table that was opened to Psalm 1. He read verses 1 and 2: “Blessed is the man / Who does not walk / In the counsel of the wicked, / Nor stand on the path of sinners, / Nor sit in the seat of mockers; / Rather his delight is in the law of Jehovah, / And in His law he meditates by day and by night.” He was drawn to these words and read the rest of the psalm, thinking that the Bible was better than he expected. The more he read, the more he liked it. The words of the Bible touched him, and the Holy Spirit worked within him. Even though no one preached the gospel to him, he repented and began confessing his sins in tears. After his salvation his only desire was to preach the Lord Jesus. I met him after his salvation, and we served the Lord together.
We should all spend time to read the Bible so that our speaking is simple and clear when we preach the gospel. Then it will not be difficult for others to understand us. When we first speak to people, we should not speak about Abraham begetting Isaac and Isaac begetting Jacob or about the prophecy of the seventy weeks. Although we may consider these to be interesting topics, the people we are speaking to will not understand us. We need to read through the Bible several times. The Bible is a treasure store that contains many riches. We also should not speak to people about insignificant matters; rather, we should take the Bible with us and speak its precious words to people everywhere. We should speak what people need to hear.
A mother may speak with us about the problems she has with her children. We can read Mark 10:14 with her, which says, “Allow the little children to come to Me.” All mothers like to hear verses like this. We can also speak of how the Lord blessed the little children. Because mothers love their children, when we speak in this way, we touch their hearts. We can then preach the gospel by explaining that only the Lord Jesus can help her children; she has no way to help them. The Lord Jesus loves little children.
It is very convenient to preach the gospel in the communities because more than twenty households live in one apartment building. We can take the elevator to their doorsteps. I heard that a Christian group in Seoul, Korea, trains its members to contact people for the gospel. There are many housewives who stay at home with little children in Seoul. When these housewives buy their groceries, they carry their child in one arm and their groceries in the other. They need someone to help them. This Christian group trains its members to wait by the elevator in the apartment buildings and help the housewives carry their groceries into the elevator and to their front door while conversing with them. As a result, the housewives invite the believers in for a cup of tea, and the gospel is preached to them. This is a good way to contact people.
If we practice, it will not be difficult to contact people for the gospel. There are over sixty new residential communities being developed within the city limits of Taipei. Young working couples who recently graduated from college live in these communities. Some denominations are already working in these communities, and there are eighty to one hundred people in their meetings. Hence, we should pay attention to the gospel work in these communities. Acts 1:8 says, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth.” Taipei is our Jerusalem. We must preach the gospel to every part of this city. The first step in gospelizing Taiwan is to gospelize the city of Taipei, and the best way to gospelize Taipei is to labor in the communities. If we labor in the communities, the gospel will spread quickly.
We have brothers and sisters in almost every community in Taipei. The most effective way is for the full-time trainees to coordinate with these brothers and sisters and go with them to knock on doors and visit people. We need to receive a burden to pray for this. There are many communities in Taipei that are equivalent to a village. It is worthwhile for us to labor in these communities. If one thousand full-time brothers and sisters coordinate with the saints living in the communities, the result will be glorious. This requires our prayer, and it requires all the brothers and sisters to pick up the burden and to spend their money and energy on this. The saints can go out in the gospel, and they can also support the full-time brothers and sisters so that the full-time serving ones can offer all their time.
The church is like an army fighting for the kingdom of God on the earth; therefore, we must give our all—our strength, time, and money—for God’s interest on the earth. This does not mean that we should not take care of our practical needs. Rather, for the Lord’s sake we should live a normal life and take care of the education of our children. If the Lord gives us any surplus, we should refuse to spend it on ourselves. We should give the surplus to the Lord. If we are willing to do this, it will be very easy to gospelize Taiwan. This will bring a great blessing to our society and to our country.
Idols are prevalent in Taiwan, and crime has increased. These conditions indicate that there is a desperate need for the gospel. We must spread the preaching of the gospel because we live in this age, and we have received a burden from the Lord to spread His recovery. The last chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, which is a book on the gospel of the kingdom, speaks of the Lord’s ultimate commission. In this chapter the Lord charges us to go and disciple all the nations because He has received all authority in heaven and on earth (28:18-19). We need to go so that the Gentiles can become not only believers but also the Lord’s disciples, that is, those who spread the Lord’s kingdom. We must go and baptize people into the Triune God. This is the commission that the Lord gave us, and we must receive it.
We are now in the Lord’s particular move in Taiwan. He has opened a wide door for the spread of the churches. We have a good environment, so we should give ourselves and take advantage of this opportunity. We need to be mobilized and give ourselves to the Lord. We should give Him our heart, strength, money, family, and children. If we do this, we will see a glorious situation in the gospelization of Taiwan.
We have been progressing positively with respect to acquiring a large meeting hall in Linkou. The land we purchased is on a hillside, and the government has many regulations concerning the development of hillside property. These regulations do not depend on whether the property is forestland or farmland. Therefore, we must go through the proper procedures and apply for a permit to develop the land.
Some saints asked why we need a large meeting hall when we are promoting the burden for the small groups and home meetings. The principle in the Bible shows that we need both the big meetings and the small meetings. These meetings can be compared to the two wings of a bird or an airplane. The big meetings are one wing, and the small meetings are the other wing. Based on the experience we gained this year, we know that even though there are many activities in the small meetings, we still need the strengthening from the big meetings. For this reason we need a large meeting hall so that the saints from localities such as Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung can gather together.
Even though there are small group meetings all over the city of Taipei, we still need a big meeting for everyone to attend at least once a month and a larger meeting every six months. In the future we hope to have two thousand five hundred full-time brothers and sisters being trained each term. The place where they can meet and have training classes is a problem. Presently, we are unable to receive the saints from overseas into the training, because of the limitations in our capacity. If we have a place with a dormitory and a dining hall, we can accept the saints from abroad to the training. This would save both time and effort.
Taipei is a large city in the Far East. It is a highly industrialized and commercial city, and the number of people living in the communities is steadily increasing. This makes Taipei a large fishing pond; it is one of the best places for preaching the gospel. Therefore, we need to pay attention to the development of our work and labor in one accord for the building of the big meeting hall. At the same time we should pay attention to the spread of the work. We should seriously consider these things before the Lord, and we should look to Him that the work in these two areas would proceed simultaneously. We should not stop the work in the communities in order to focus on the development of the large meeting hall. If we do this, we will suffer loss. We must work toward the building of the large meeting hall at Linkou and, at the same time, put our strength, time, and money into developing the work in the communities.
We need to exercise faith toward the Lord, and look to Him for His blessing and His leading. We do not discuss money when someone is sent out for the work. This is an established practice among us. It is wrong for a person to think that because the work sends him out, it will also give him a specific amount of money. This is not our practice. When we first came to Taiwan, the work did not arrange for any money to be given to me. The only one who supplied me was my senior co-worker, Brother Watchman Nee. In 1933 when I was struggling with the decision of leaving my job and serving the Lord full time, Brother Nee was returning to China on a ship in the Mediterranean Sea, and he wrote me a letter confirming my decision to serve the Lord. When I received the letter, I was surprised, and I felt it was from the Lord; hence, I made a special trip to Shanghai to visit him. He asked me to stay in Shanghai for three or four months. Once during that time, he came to the place where I was staying and said, “Brother Witness, the Lord has given this for your use.” He then left me an envelope. That was the first time that he supplied me financially, and it is deeply engraved on my heart.
Later, when he took the lead in the work to send me to Taiwan, in either April or May of 1949, he personally gave me three hundred U.S. dollars. That was how I came to Taiwan. My household consisted of twelve people: my wife and I, our eight children, and two helpers whom we could not leave behind. We came as a household of twelve people and lived in a Japanese-style house that was about three hundred square feet.
At that time most of the brothers and sisters who came from mainland China fled to Taiwan with the government. Few people were wealthy. It was at this time that two Chinese brothers from Manila came to Taiwan and saw the needs of the work. This was of the Lord. They bought a piece of land and gave it to the church. This is part of the land on which hall one of the church in Taipei stands. They also built a small meeting hall on the land, and we began to meet in it.
After the work began on August 1, 1949, it spread rapidly, and the meeting hall was no longer adequate. Behind the meeting hall was a piece of land that had only the concrete foundations of houses that were bombed during the war. A Taiwanese man was using the land to grow vegetables. We felt to buy his rights to the land, and he agreed to sell his rights to us for almost two hundred U.S. dollars. We then went to the Bureau of National Assets for the parcel number of the land and to find out if it had been sold to anyone. It had not been sold, so we immediately applied to buy the land. In those days land was very cheap, and we purchased it for less than one thousand U.S. dollars. This is the land on which hall one stands.
In November 1950 I went to the Philippines to begin the work there, and I stayed there for five and a half months. As I was about to leave the saints, a brother who was a businessman made an appointment and met with me. He said that he would cover all the expenses for the spread of the Lord’s work in Taiwan, regardless of how much it was. Even though I said that we never tell people how much money the work needs, he insisted that I was not telling him; rather, it was he who was asking me to please let him know how much was needed. From that time onward, for a period of eleven years, this brother bore the financial responsibility for the work in Taiwan. The land for most of the meeting halls in Taiwan was purchased during those years. This was the Lord’s provision.
The Lord has blessed us not only in relation to our numbers and the work; He has also blessed us in material things. We should not go by what we see; we must be determined to do whatever the Lord wants us to do.
When I went to America to begin the work there, I was empty-handed, just as I was when I came to Taiwan. At the time I was still responsible for the monthly living expenses of several co-workers in Taiwan. The Lord began the work in America, and He is still blessing it to this day. We obtained a large meeting hall in Anaheim, California, and another one in Irving, Texas. These two meeting halls were given to us by the Lord. I am fellowshipping these matters because I want everyone to believe that the Lord blesses His work.
The publication work of the ministry office is taken care of at three stations. One station is in Anaheim, the second station is our printing section in Irving, and the third station is the Taiwan Gospel Book Room in Taipei. There are more than sixty full-time serving ones in these three places. There are more than twice that number of volunteers who come in to work; there are more than one hundred twenty volunteers. All of this has been accomplished by the Lord.
Even though the Linkou project will require several million Taiwan dollars, we should not put all our money into this project and neglect the development of the work in the communities. This is wrong. We must labor simultaneously in both areas. The brothers and sisters should labor before the Lord and learn how to use their money so that by faithfully giving, they can gradually attain the amount they have pledged to the Lord. We should not forget the amount of our pledge, and we should not take money from that amount to use for other purposes.
Some brothers and sisters will ask whether the cost for purchasing the land at Linkou, developing the plans, and constructing the hall exceeds our original budget. This may be true, but we believe that the churches around the world will contribute to this project. We believe that when the offerings of the overseas churches are added to the offerings of the churches in Taiwan, the lack will be taken care of. This will not be a problem. We must be faithful to fulfill the offering we pledged to the Lord. As long as the brothers and sisters faithfully make their offerings, according to their vow to the Lord, the completion of the large meeting hall will not be a heavy burden. We believe that the Lord will continue to bless us.
Related to the spread of the community work, the brothers and sisters still need to do their best before the Lord to support the needs of the work. Then the full-time brothers and sisters will be adequately supported and will have a stable living without anxieties. This will enable them to work in peace. If the full-time saints are hindered financially, it will affect the brothers and sisters who want to go full time in the future. They will lack the boldness to give themselves. Thus, we must take good care of the present full-timers so that future full-timers will be at peace. This does not mean that the full-timers do not have faith, but they need to take care of their families. The purpose of this fellowship is not to deprive the brothers and sisters of food and clothing. Rather, it is for them to live a normal life and take care of their children’s education but not spend even one penny on unnecessary items. May the Lord’s blood cover me; this is what I practice. I buy only the clothes and items that I need, and I make a budget so that any surplus can be used for the Lord. If we would all practice this, the Lord’s blessing would be upon us.
According to the experience of the believers and the promises in the Bible, if we are faithful to the Lord, He will open the windows of heaven and pour out blessings upon us. Malachi 3:10 says, “Bring the whole tithe to the storehouse that there may be food in My house; and prove Me, if you will, by this, says Jehovah of hosts, whether I will open to you the windows of heaven and pour out blessing for you until there is no room for it.” When this word was spoken, there were many defeated ones among the Israelites, which resulted in the situation recorded in the book of Haggai: “You have sown much, but you bring in little; you eat, but there is no satisfaction; you drink, but there is no being filled with drink; you dress yourselves, but there is no warmth in doing so; and he who earns wages, earns wages to put them into a bag with holes” (1:6). We should believe that our Lord is real and living and that He is faithful. All His words in the Bible are trustworthy. For the past sixty years I have been following Him, relying on Him, and believing Him; hence, I can testify to you that I have seen His multifarious riches manifested in our faithfulness. Brothers and sisters, it is a blessing and a glory for us to be willing to see the Lord’s need and to give our all for His use.
We should consider what would happen if we all consecrated everything we have for the Lord’s use. Gradually, three thousand, four thousand, and even ten thousand people would be saved. Seeing the fruit of our material offerings would make us joyful. In Luke 16:9 the Lord said, “Make friends for yourselves by means of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal tabernacles.” Today we are happy when we see people being saved, and when we enter the kingdom, there will be people welcoming us. I believe that we will be surprised to see those who will welcome us. They will say to us, “The money you gave provided the way for me to be saved.” We truly believe that this will happen; otherwise, the Lord would not have spoken this word. We should all believe this word. The Lord makes the way, and He gives the blessing.
It is necessary for us to complete the large meeting facility. After the meeting facility is completed, we will discover that it does not fully meet our need. Therefore, we will need more large stations in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Taichung, Hualien, and Taitung to meet the need of spreading the work to the entire island. This is not a small thing. We must also proceed with the development of the community work in the city of Taipei. We must take care of these three things.
Prayer: Lord, You have heard our fellowship. We believe that it is from You, and we ask You to come in and accomplish it. Bless the brothers and sisters for the sake of these things. Bless their homes, their children, and their jobs so that they can give themselves, their households, their time, and their money. Lord, for the sake of the increase and spread of the churches, bless this country, our society, and the development of this island. Glorify Your name. The day of Your coming is near. We ask You to gospelize, truthize, and churchize Taiwan so that Taiwan can become an island that is full of Your testimony. May all the glory be to the Triune God. Amen.
